


I Never Would Have Dreamed of the Life I've Had

by bioticbotanist



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Colonist!Shepard, F/M, Sole Survivor!Shepard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:55:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6175789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticbotanist/pseuds/bioticbotanist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A set of oneshots throughout Shepard and Kaidan's lives meant to capture different moments through the series. Meant to celebrate some of the imperfect moments, ones that while they didn't decide the fate the galaxy, surely flashed past their eyes at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Yellow

Shepard is sixteen when he first sees her, though he doesn’t realize who she will be when he catches a glimpse of her on the news channel. Fresh out of brain camp he’s in the kitchen with two sandwiches on the counter, half spread with mustard. His limbs aren't quite filled out yet and his face is set with a teenage rebelliousness. A picture on the news catches his attention. His mother calls something from upstairs and he is too absorbed in the rapidly moving headlines that stream across the bottom of the image to respond.

The story was already a few days old, a colony ambushed and decimated, only a few dozen survivors out of several thousand. Most footage had been aerial shots of the smoking ruins and video shot from field reporters omni-tools, shaky and framed by military uniforms.

This is different.

A girl is screaming on the television, though in the kitchen it’s silenced, by the newschannel’s filter or the mute button he’s never quite sure. Her biotics flare chaotically around her in blue waves. Clothes half burned and covered in dirt she cowers in a depression in the ground, one that by the mundane eye would seem to be carved out by an asteriod. The blue tinged sear marks, like nuclear debris, say otherwise. The video is pixelated and blurry when it freezes on her face, a name stamped underneath, suspended in miserable fear. This photo would become the face of the Mindoir raid in coming weeks, plastered on rally signs outside the Citadel Embassy, splashed all over the extranet.

A second call from his mother brings him back to the yellow painted kitchen, sun filtering in through the backdoor’s window. He heads up the stairs with a sandwich in this mouth, leaving the girl and the chattering news anchor behind him.


	2. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again I'm a sucker for prequels so here it is. I absolutely refuse to believe they never ran into each other before their assignment on the Normandy, even if they maybe don't remember it, or recognize each other later.

Kaidan Alenko is twenty six with white flowers in his hands, in a waiting room on the east wing of Arcturus station. Generally the Alliance didn’t want visitors in the hospital wing unless the patient was on their last legs. Visiting rooms existed for patients to meet with loved ones or, in his case, squadmates. A private in his platoon had taken a bullet a few weeks ago, he’d come to see how she was recovering. 

Sofia was the sunshine of the division, and they dearly missed her now that they were down two snipers. The entire squad had signed the card, and her fiancee, currently on active duty, had included a large bouquet. Aside from him a there are three other people in the room, two men, one considerably younger, perhaps the other’s son, chatting quietly, and an older woman who sits in a corner booth, reading from her omni-tool. The door creaks and he looks up expectantly. The perky latina with bouncing curls doesn’t appear, instead it’s an ashen faced stranger. She limps along using the IV stand as a support, it’s rickety wheels scraping on the floor. Her feet have no shoes, clad in hospital issue beige socks, the kind they use for patients getting surgery. She sits gingerly in the plastic chair stationed at table two down from his. The two empty seats across from her glare accusingly and her expression wavers for a minute, searching the room, before her eyes drop.

Besides the conversation from the two, who he is fairly sure are father and son now, and the quiet clicking of the woman’s omni-tool, the room is silent. It wouldn’t bother him normally, except there is an itching at the back of his mind that means the start of a migraine. The room seems to hum with energy and he’s trying to keep his implant from flaring. Where is that coming from? He searches the uneven edge of the stranger’s bob, looking for the tell tale incision of an implant, but there’s nothing but freckles. The father and son are saying goodbye and in the silence that follows their departure the humming seems to increase. His pulse is throbbing and he silently swears for not keeping his pain meds on hand. It takes exactly two minutes of sustained silence before he finally breaks. His tone in neutral, despite his already building headache, careful not to spook the bandaged girl with glass eyes.

“I think your amp is acting up, you should check it.”

She looks up, mouth slightly open, and reaches to touch the nape of her neck with her right hand. He sees the burns that run along her skin like angry red veins. Acid burns, etched in a vaguely familiar design from fingertip to elbow. She pauses halfway to her neck, then switches arms, placing the other on the cool linoleum.

“Sorry,” her voice surprisingly throaty “they upgraded it recently.”

He gives her a small smile.

“No problem.” he says, knowing what she said was a lie.

They hadn’t released any L3 upgrades for over a year, and L4s weren’t scheduled for release for two years. He felt rather bad that he’d mentioned it, given her condition she likely couldn’t control her biotics even if she wanted to.

Silence stretches out and she nervously flicks a speck of dirt off the table, internally cringing.

“So,” she begins unevenly “are those for a squad member?”

“Yeah, she got clipped on a recon mission, been in the recovery ward for a few weeks.” he motions to the flowers “I’m bringing a whole platoon’s worth of ‘Get Well’ cards.”

Her forced smile turns wobbly. He looks away to give her some privacy, and when he glances over a minute later she is staring at the cheap polka dotted linoleum again.

A few humming minutes later Sofia hobbles through the door, weighed down by a heavy bandage and beaming. They talk for half hour or so, and about twenty minutes in the girl waves over a nurse. The nurse is in white, prim and sterile, one of a thousand, and her face is a mask of politeness. The girl mutters something and the nurse nods, helping her up from the chair. She slowly pushes herself through the doors back to the in-patient wing. In the lights he can see the shadow of her figure in the large hospital gown, scrawny except for the bulk of a dressing on her side. 

The nurse doesn’t even protest that the girl hadn’t seen a visitor.

As he walks out of the hospital wing, having said goodbye to Sofia, the empty chairs across from the girl hover in his mind. He thanks the nurse who opens the door for him and makes a mental note to call his parents later.

They haven’t spoken in some time.


	3. Patent Leather Heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This took far longer to write than I would care to admit but hey, editing is hard. I don't think I'll ever be quite happy with how this one turned out, but for now I am content. Hope you guys like this one, lots more interaction, and noticeable longer. Set post ME1 battle, because I'm trashy.

Two weeks after the defeat of Saren Arterius Commander Shepard, clad in high heels and black eyeliner, walks out the side door of a restaurant nestled on the Silversun Strip. Kaidan had left the restaurant fifteen minutes earlier, hoping to avoid any incidents with the paparazzi who had been relentlessly dogging Shepard since the battle.They had chosen a smaller restaurant, dark lighting, far apart tables. The stainless steel accents, dark wood, abstract art on the walls; this was kind of place where you needed a million credits in your bank account to even be considered for a reservation. Still, she thought as the hanar had guided them to their table, it would be difficult to get a good picture, and hard for a reporter to listen in. She glanced at a salarian waiter dressed in black and white, noting that the staff were likely too well paid to accept bribes. They hadn’t seen any paparazzi when they came, probably because the reservations had been under Kaidan’s name to avoid notice. It was halfway through the first glass of wine before she stopped looking at the faces of the other guests, trying to see the flash of a hidden camera. 

People mingle around her as she steps into the artificial light, neon signs washing over her exposed skin. Silversun always fascinated her. It seemed like the epitome of city life, full of flashing lights, glitzy dresses, and endless chatter of the crowd over the booming announcements from the casino a block away. The Silversun Strip never sleeps, full of the sound of clinking glasses and Quasar scoreboards. She walks slowly, trying to avoid catching her heels on the seams of the floor tiles. The crowd swims around her, moving in the fast paced current of traffic. She stumbles over a ledge on the floor, absorbed in the flashing purple billboard advertising happy hour at Flux. Her wayward step trips the asari maiden to her right, who curses as she struggles up from the floor. Shepard is about to apologize when the maiden’s tiger striped face twists in irritation. 

“Watch where you’re going, human!” she huffs, picking up her long hemmed dress.

Under normal circumstances Shepard would have flashed her gun and watched the girl stammer out an excuse. Instead she stares astonished as the asari glares at her and then turns on her heel. Like she is just another passerby. Shepard held her hand to her mouth to suppress a laugh. She could hear a newsanchor’s voice shuffling their papers before looking at the camera and stating that the ‘Savior of the Citadel’ had been told off by an spindly armed asari.  
In the darkened windows of the casino she can see her reflection, the artificial pink of her lips and clinging fabric of her dress. Between the makeup and clothes most of the galaxy would find her unrecognizable. Her ability to roam the wards had been granted by an eyeshadow palette and a pair of designer heels. Her ribs seem to expand and her smile turns broad. Now she’s just another casino guest, taking a short break from the smoke clouded rooms. 

She remembers being eleven and seeing the bright lights and elegant dresses darting by fuzzily on her sister’s omni-tool screen. In the dark of their house in summer she crowded around the screen with wide eyes, hand stitched blankets scratching her legs. Back then the Citadel was some far away space station thousands of times bigger than Mindoir. She held the plastic model of the Citadel in her hands like a baby bird and imagined all the people moving along its fast-paced halls. Glamorous and romantic, full of unbuttoned collars and smeared lipstick. 

I could have had this life.

The thought slips unwanted into her brain. 

A mixture of amusement and something heavier settles in her chest.

She could have. She could have gotten textbooks instead of dogtags for her eighteenth birthday. Business school instead of basic training. Her friends would be dressed in suits and evening gowns, chatting about stocks over a late night drink. Her skin would be unscarred, nails polished, hands soft. Her biotics would be a little irregularity people asked about in conversation, not the thing that kept bullets from piercing her vital organs. Her nightmares would be of spiders and long falls, not reliving the day she saw her skin melt off her arm.

Her head shakes involuntarily, trying to keep out the intrusive thoughts that rattled in her skull.

Shepard starts walking again, faster this time, leaving the thoughts behind, but dragging along the heaviness in her chest.

Under breath she starts listing of good memories, small pieces of happiness. Making jam with her father in a messy kitchen, watching award shows on the couch with her sister, trying tequila with her brother when her parents were asleep. The memories keep flooding in. She’s playing cards with her first squad, Anderson teaches her to shoot a gun. She remembers standing proud as she received her N7 armor. The feeling when she became Anderson named her captain of the Normandy. The silence in the cargo bay when Ashley recited poetry. 

Shepard flinches away from the memory. 

Her heels make a light clicking sound on the walkway, but all she hears is the heavy dragging meg boots, muffled by her helmet, walking away from a slumped figure. The list of memories suddenly becomes a list of the deceased. Names of smiling friends turn into faded uniforms and empty chairs. For every friend she can name there is a body buried light years away. 

Her mother used to point at the sky and say a person had as many lives as there were stars. Each speck of light was another chapter in a life, another stop in some grand journey. Standing on their porch she’d beg her mother to tell her about all her other fantastical lives. As a detective on Earth, an ambassador on Terra Nova, a bounty hunter on the edges of Citadel space. Looking at the checkerboard of lights high above her she didn’t see the emptiness of space. She saw the adventures of lifetimes. Every story would be ended with ‘but the most amazing story takes place in a small colony in the Kepler Verge called Mindoir.’ She would beg for her to tell the story of the colonist girl, but her mother would just wink and say ‘you’ll have to wait.’ 

Standing in front of a freshly engraved headstone she wondered when her mother had stopped telling those stories, and when had she stopped believing her life was anything other than a surviving.

Every year that passes seems to carry her farther away from the girl sitting on a porch swing with star filled eyes. The world gets greyer every new year, and the chorus of dead voices gets louder. On which planet had she been standing on when she gave up hope of happiness?

Her chest feels empty and her throat burns. She falters in the crush of people, stumbling to a halt. 

And then she sees him.

He’s standing in the center of the boulevard, an island in the stream of people, lights washing over his black suit.

In the chaos and clutter her world suddenly snaps into place. 

Because if there is an word that was the opposite of regret, it would be his name.

In all the lives she would have, whether it was just one or countless more, she would pick this one every time, because this was the life where she met him. 

His face breaks into a smile when she approaches him. He barely gets a greeting out before she pulls him in by his collar to kiss him. He makes a sound of surprise but melts into her after a second, arms wrapping around her. The kiss tastes like lipstick but the smell of his cologne fills her nose. Shepard presses into him and they stumble backwards a step, lost in the feeling of him. When they finally break apart they’re both breathless.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Kaidan says gasping “but what was that for?”

“To celebrate,” Shepard grins “after all we managed to go 24 hours together without everything going to hell.”

Their noses brush softly and she can see the dark fringe of lashes around his eyes. In the light of the Silversun Strip gravity doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and she could just float away.

“I think we’ve still got time to cause an explosion at least.”

Her laughter is light like a sixteen year old girl with bouncing braids. 

“Come on,” she’s pulling at his hand “I thought we could take the scenic way back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also just realized how much of a fake out the title of this chapter is, sorry guys. I've been trying to stick to objects or likewise as titles because I'm a big fan of the (ultra cheesy) trope of an object bringing back specific memories. For me it was what stuck out the most in the chapter. (also there's a direct follow up to this chapter coming soon, so the abrupt ending won't seem as weird when the next chapter comes out)


	4. Silver Reflections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well here it is, the product of blood and sweat and a lot of tears. This one picks up right after the end of the last chapter, and takes more of Kaidan's POV. (side note: did you know the Presidium has 0.3 G gravity? Neither did I until about a week ago. mass effect wiki is magical.)

The Presidium is generally closed to public access during nighttime hours, besides a few C-Sec patrols and lingering diplomats the commons are blissfully empty. Shepard presses her hand to the door, the seal clicking and whirring before it opened. 

“Spectre perks,” she shrugged when he raised his eyebrows.

The smell of fresh water and metal hits Kaidan, humidity clinging to his face. His first few steps bounce before he readjusts himself to the lower gravity.

Shepard leans down to undo the straps of her heels, sighing as the balls of her feet land on the cool floor. She blows the hair out of her face when she straightens up, the neatly pinned hair escaping despite her best efforts. Kaidan smiles without realizing it, thinking of how she roughly pulls off her helmet every time the airlock sealed behind them, gasping like she can finally breathe again. Her face flushed with heat or cold, hair sweaty and frizzy, usually still bantering with Joker over the comm as she reaches for the first seals on her armor. Now the lights of the Normandy are replaced by the dim reflection off the Presidium lakes, but she still looks the same to him. 

“Like the view?” she says, quirking an eyebrow at his stare.

The words almost push themselves past his lips, ones that can’t survive out in open air yet. Things he wouldn’t dare tell her when tomorrow they’d wake up as Lieutenant and Commander. 

That she’s beautiful like the sunset. Vibrant, fleeting, overwhelming. That when he sees her time stops. That she is the marker between before and after in his view of the world.

“It’s stunning.” he says offering her a hand.

He’d settle for playful banter.

Her smile shines white in the faint light, accepting his hand. He lifts her easily, and she floats up more like a ballerina than a soldier, hair floating in the light gravity. With inches between them he can see the playful glint in her eyes.

“Literally or figuratively?” she asks, voice throaty.

“Why not both?”

She laughs lightly, and her smile makes it difficult to see the yellowing bruise along her jaw. She’s tugging on his hand, pulling him forward.

“Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”

She switches the side she’s on, trading out her right hand for her left. The faded sketching that wraps around her right hand is now hidden behind the fold of her dress. 

She had waved those fingers at him jokingly that day on the crew deck, saying is was like having rubber fingertips. The skin may have healed, but the nerves never did.

He ran his thumb across the back of her hand as they walked along the commons, a feeling her other hand would have been dead to. The corners of her mouth curl in response.

Her face is relaxed, the lines that normally tense have smoothed out. Her steps are light on the cool floor tiles, gliding along the floor with her now too long dress skimming behind. Kaidan is hit suddenly by the realization that she isn’t even thirty yet. Standing at the helm of the Normandy he would never believe it, but here she is younger. 

“Here it is,” she gestures with a sweep of her hand.

“Wow,” his eyes widen.

Big place.

They stand on one of the thin walkways that crossed over the lakes of the Presidium. Underneath them was water, shining like lakes of silver. Small fountains, some broken, some spurting slow falling water, dot the waterways. Bridges, like the one they stood on now, are like sutures joining the white walls of the Embassies together. Tiny patches of green and black spot the expanse of moving water, scars leftover from the attack. Small piles of shrapnel are visible in corners, not yet carted away by the Keepers. The bustle of people is absent, no chatter or tumult of moving people. For a brief moment he wonders if this is how the Citadel looked when the asari first came here, so many millennia ago. The ring of the Presidium curves under their feet, turning from the distant ground into a hazy skyline.

“Shepard, how did you know about this?”

“I like to wander,” she says dismissively waving her hand “my parents said it was a colonist’s instinct, and I stumbled upon it by accident.”

“I know it sounds strange,” she sighs “but it reminds me of home.”

“Was Mindoir really this big?” he asks, wonder in his voice.

“No, actually,” she says “it was pretty small, agricultural colony in its second stage. We lived by a lake though, a big one. At night everything was empty, just little silver shelters and the reflections of the moons over the lake.”

The memories are covered in a film of gray, but some snippets still hold their original color. Dark windows with warm beds, white light in reflections, the soft sound of water. 

“It must be beautiful.” Kaidan says softly.

“It was.” 

A comment she had made after their mission on Feros surfaced in Kaidan’s mind, her voice bitter and hard.

They rebuild Mindoir. It wasn’t the same.

His arms wrap around her waist and her hands press over his. The material of her dress is thick but his fingers slide over it easily. She leans into him, the beading on neck of the dress presses uncomfortably into his skin, but he doesn’t even notice. He can feel her breathing slowly and her hair brushes the side of his face.

“Do you miss it?” Kaidan murmurs, voice muffled in her neck.

It takes a minute for her to respond, but when she does she sounds exhausted.

“I miss not running.” 

In the silence that follows his arms tighten a fraction around her waist. He is reminded of frantic kissing and entangled limbs the night they finally stopped running from each other. The night he knew how her silhouette looked framed with nothing but stars.

Far away a Keeper scuttles from one terminal to the next, pausing over a welded seam finished a few hours ago. 

Her eyes flicker open to track the sound, checking for movement along the horizon. Though her muscles are relaxed her biotics flare slightly. His gaze follows hers.

Shepard shifts, detaching herself, fingers falling from his reluctantly.

“We better head back, we’re shipping out early.”

Her eyes flick away from his like a door slamming shut. Her shoulders are squared, her tone reserved and even. She’s a commander again, her exhaustion disappearing under a facade. The woman he loves fades into the back of a soldier’s mind. He reaches out desperately.

“Hey,” he catches her hand “let’s just stay.”

“Kaidan-” 

She says his name like it’s an exception to a rule.

“Just a bit longer.” he says softly, searching for her eyes in faint light.

Shepard looks uncertain, still half turned away. 

“We’ll have plenty of time to stand at arm's length tomorrow.” he pleads.

Her expression wavers. A crooked smile plays along her lips.

“Okay.” she concedes.

“Okay.” he echoes.

Their fingers lace, resting on the slippery silver railing. Their hands are rough against one another’s. He grips her hand like a vice, like it’s the only thing keeping her there. She squeezes once in response. 

The slit of her dress draws back and her scarred skin peeks through. He can see the medi-gel patch glimmering on her leg, tiny network of synthetic veins overlapping the wound, shining despite the lack of illumination. It’s high up on her thigh, close to where the slit stops. Another new scar, another trail marker on her skin. The sight of it brings a memory flooding back.

The Council chambers are on fire. Joker’s voice cracks through the static on Shepard’s omni-tool as he signs out. Kaidan is about to holster his gun when the world suddenly jolts.

Glass shatters.The floor is breaking. A body lurches back to life.

Kaidan’s heart speeds up remembering it, glass and metal and leaves all falling from above as he tried to unjam his pistol. 

He had taken a hit to his shoulder, the shot punched clean through his armor. Shepard was reloading, ducking against a fallen beam. Kaidan clicked his omni-tool, grimly noting this was his last dose of medi-gel. The clacking of metal on metal was growing closer, Kaidan ran, rolling into cover.

Saren’s disfigured body crawled towards them, red eyes empty, sparks flying from whatever was left of his ribcage. Medi-gel flooded his system and his world tilted as the effects begin take hold. A biotic surge gave Kaidan enough time to sprint from one pillar to the next, at least he thought. There’s a noise, a sniper laser charging he realized belatedly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shepard streaking towards Saren. There was a deafening moment of silence after he hit the ground, then two loud shots.

“Shepard!”

He ducked out from cover, scouring the garden for her armor. It took him less than a second to find her, standing over what was left of a body.

The hydraulics that held Saren’s leg to his hip spurted silver liquid, a detached limb a few feet away. His face was gone, blown away by shotgun shells, messily broken at the neck. The commander didn’t move for a moment. Her hands tremored slightly, her whole body rigid. 

Kaidan let his sights drop, running to her.

“Commander, are you hurt?”

She reloaded without blinking, then emptied the clip into the twitching body. She didn’t flinch when silver splattered her face.

He knew then what he had known for weeks.

She was not Rahna. Rahna who never knew how to hurt people. Rahna who couldn’t stand to see the blood dripping off his hands.

He had hesitantly told her about Rahna one morning, steaming mugs on the table forgotten as he pried open the wound he’d been trying to heal for years. She never blamed him, nor Rahna, just sat quietly. Her ending remark had stuck with him for months afterwards.

“There are different types of people, Kaidan. Types that think they can save them all. Types that think sacrifice is a necessity. Neither is right all the time. None of them are wrong either, but we don’t see eye to eye on things.” she had paused, swishing her now cold tea in the mug “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes I wish I could be like Rahna.”

But she isn’t. 

Her fingers fit the trigger mechanism of a rifle like a gear in clockwork and her knuckles are scarred by years of last ditch survival efforts. 

She is like him. They carry their lives in worn duffel bags, carted from ship to ship. They spend their days treading over dusty mountains, the only people that may ever leave their footprints on that desolate planet. They have scars from the chinks in their armor, weaknesses they hold reminders of. Their skin is blistered and bruised, breath labored and heaving. 

Now they stand like painted figurines on a silver backdrop, infinitesimal to the ships approaching the Citadel. Just two dark specks on the delicate shining ring of the Presidium. 

A thought floats through Kaidan’s mind, that perhaps there are more to the species of people than volus and asari, than turian and drell. An uncountable number more. The chance you find yourself amongst your own kind is rare. Here, with just the stars for their company, he is not alone.

He wouldn’t tell her for almost three years. He would spend the next month trying to condense all he felt into something he could articulate. He would spend the next two years regretting he didn’t try sooner. It was too new then, too easily broken. They stood, shoulders barely brushing, silence filling the gaps between them. He can recall it even now, that feeling that sat in his lungs, leaning against the railing high above the Presidium waters. He would never have enough breath to explain what it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue is my natural enemy and my editor was out of commission for this so I really hope it was up to snuff. I really tried to put Rahna and contrast with Shepard but also not make it seem like 'I'm not like the other girls' trope. Not sure if I succeeded. Thanks so much for all the support! As a first time fanfic author it honestly means the world.


End file.
